Conventional spreadsheets allow users to enter a value into a cell and to assign a display format to the value. By assigning a display format, a user can convey additional context for a particular cell value. Conventional spreadsheets support display formats such as number, text, Boolean, date, and currency. The user can further apply different operations to the cell values and in certain situations the display format will propagate to the result of the operation. In some situations, a default display format will be applied to the result of the operation.
Circumstances exist where the cell display format is insufficient to determine the intended result. In some cases, this results in an inconvenience—the resulting display format does not provide the correct context but the user can manually modify the display format to display the resulting value as intended. In other cases, the result of an operation is incorrect—the resulting value is not the intended value regardless of the format used to display the calculated value. The use of a display format to provide context to a cell value constrains conventional spreadsheet applications from determining the intended result of the user.